From Kabul: Post-Election Crisis – August 31, 2009

REESE ERLICH, Erlich is an award-winning freelance reporter now on assignment in Kabul. He said today: “The Afghan elections were more aimed at improving the country’s image among North Americans and Europeans than at promoting democracy in Afghanistan. Afghans turned out in very low numbers, and the process revealed massive fraud. The U.S. government is now scrambling to put the best possible face on a process that shows the U.S. is losing militarily and politically in Afghanistan.”Erlich’s books include “Dateline Havana” and “The Iran Agenda.”

NORMAN SOLOMON,
http://www.normansolomon.com, norman@accuracy.orgSolomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He said today: “It’s more evident from talking with well-informed people in Kabul than from reading the U.S. press that the wheels are gradually coming off the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. The response from Washington seems to be to tweak and redouble doomed efforts while escalating the military violence. In painful contrast, rhetoric aside, the expenditures for humanitarian assistance and development aid are comparatively paltry — in a country with horrific poverty.” Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

RICK REYES, After enlisting in the Marine Corps, Reyes served as an infantry rifleman. He was deployed in “Operation Enduring Freedom” (Afghanistan) 2001 and then “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (Iraq) 2003. In 2008 he got involved in the Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan project and testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Video of that testimony is posted at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypwrq4mbiQwReyes is a co-founding member of Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167